Bright (shooting) star

The Perseid meteor shower is known for shooting stars that are especially bright and fast. Their annual August appearance was especially memorable this year thanks to an assist from Jupiter. The giant planet's gravity pulled on the comet debris stream, allowing Earth to pass more directly through the middle of it, producing double the normal amount of shooting stars as a result.

Mega shooting star stack

Photographer Michael Seeley created this image by stacking a series of 105 shots taken at Indian River Lagoon near Melbourne, Florida.

"I captured four meteors, and three are visible here (the fourth is behind the clouds). There were also five or six others I saw that were either out of the frame or were too faint to be captured," Seeley says.

View from Israel

A Perseid meteor streaks across the sky above trees in the central Israeli village of Luzit during the meteor shower that occurs yearly when the Earth passes through the cloud of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle.

Hunting for subtle spiral crossers

You have to search a bit to find the trails of meteors that cut across the spiral pathways of stars in this time-lapse from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but it's worth the hunt. Alan Osterholtz snapped this stunner.